


Rachel Visits the Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary

by vanishedSchism



Category: Worm - Wildbow
Genre: Gen, Puppers!, Rachel gets to hang out with old dogs, it's rlly cute, let her be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-25 14:56:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7537180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanishedSchism/pseuds/vanishedSchism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>exactly what it says on the tin. it's 2k words of rachel + dog fluff</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rachel Visits the Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [ underoriginal's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/underoriginal/pseuds/underoriginal) [ commission](http://vanishedschism.tumblr.com/post/147550001490/writing-commission-sale). 
> 
> Disclaimer: I have never been to the Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary. The dogs and characters in this story are not meant to represent any actual dogs or people at the Sanctuary. All I know about the Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary is what they post on their Facebook and website.

The first time Rachel visited the Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary, she went alone. She'd been to plenty of shelters, and she knew that a cutesy name didn't mean shit when it came to their treatment of animals and she wasn't about to trust anywhere without scoping it out first. Taylor offered to look into things for her, but although she knew Taylor would be careful and thorough, she wanted to do this herself. Cain deserved that. 

Her first impression hadn’t been favorable. The house was just that, a _house_ , the kind of place where people who got dogs because they looked pretty or cute. It reminded her of Bad Things, things she preferred not to think about, and was almost enough to prevent her from walking inside. Any shelter she would trust with Brutus wouldn’t be set up in a large house, it just wouldn’t. 

But Taylor had assured her that this place was good, and Taylor had almost as difficult of a time trusting people as Rachel. If she suggested this place, then didn’t she owe it to Cain to at least check it out? 

Of course she did. For Cain. And maybe for all of her dogs. They weren’t getting younger, and the villain life was hard on them. 

She walked up to the door and banged against it with her fist before she could have any second thoughts. A girl opened the door. She was short, almost a full head shorter than Rachel, and her long blonde hair was pulled back into a braid that keep it out of her face. She was wearing shorts- sensible for this weather, and Rachel could see a number of scars on her legs, clearly from dog bites and scratches. 

Despite all that though, she carried herself like she was used to being listened to. She checked for a dog first, and when she didn’t see any, she looked up to meet Rachel’s eyes. Rachel didn’t look away. She may be walking into this girl’s territory, but people manipulated and twisted words to make you do what they wanted. Rachel wasn’t going to allow that to happen, and that started with not showing any weakness. 

The girl dropped her gaze first. 

She plowed on though. “Are you with a registered Foster Home?"

“No."

“Alright. Do you have a dog?"

“Yes."

The girl stood on her tiptoes so she could see over Rachel’s shoulder. She didn’t see any dog. 

“Alright, well why don’t you come in and talk to Gary, he can suggest next steps.” 

She held the door open as she retreated inside. Rachel reluctantly followed. 

After a lot of frustrated explaining, the people in the house finally understood why Rachel was there. She wanted to check out the shelter before she trusted them. She didn’t see why that was so difficult to grasp, but everyone became twice as friendly once they understood. Which didn’t really make her feel better. 

Anna volunteered to give her a tour of the place, pointing out the dogs, of course, but also the facilities they had, the sunny deck, the cool room with windows and pillows and baskets, a well stocked kitchen, the laundry room and medicine storage. As she pointed things out, she stopped trying to impress Rachel, which in turn made Rachel start to relax. 

The dogs looked happy at least, though most of them ignored the two humans walking through. Probably because Anna was so loud. Rachel frowned. Yes, the place was in a house, which still put her off, but everything was clean and well organized. She couldn’t have reasonably asked more from the people working under her, and the dogs here looked healthier than her dogs, though that was probably because they weren’t constantly fighting people. 

She asked a couple of terse questions and got a full explanation of how the dogs were fed and what sorts of enrichment items they got. Rachel had to admit that she was grudgingly impressed. Anna seemed to know what she was doing. 

That night, she talked to Taylor about her impressions. She still wasn’t sold, but the Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary definitely looked the best of the places she’d investigated. In the end, Taylor convinced her. After all, Lisa had come from a house like that and turned out fine, right? 

Sort of. 

\--

The second time wasn’t much easier, though for a completely different reason. Rachel had taken Cain on a run the night before, riding on his back as they flew through the city streets, had been exhilarating. And it reminded her of when things weren’t as complicated, when she didn’t have to worry about other _people_ looking up to her, when she didn’t have to deal with people, when she could just ignore everything except her dogs. 

Cassie did a good job of keeping things organized, but it was more work than Rachel was interested in. If her orders not being obeyed didn’t mean her dogs wouldn’t get fed or walked or vaccinated, she would have just ordered everyone to leave her the fuck alone. 

Too bad. She had enough dogs that she needed people working with her. And Taylor would probably be upset if she yelled at all of the people under her “for no reason”. 

She sighed and scratched Cain behind the ear. He wagged his tail slowly. He was pretty mellow as far as her dogs went, a german shepherd that she’d rescued from a dogfighting ring. His ears were torn and he had a scar on his flank, but he was otherwise friendly. She would miss him. 

“Be good,” she told him, before walking up to the door. Once again, it took a moment for her to work up the courage to knock, and once again she was greeted by the girl. 

“Oh you _do_ have a dog! And he looks so healthy! What’s his name?"

“Cain,” Rachel muttered. 

“Well hey there Cain,” the girl said, giving Cain a chance to sniff her, “I think you’re going to like your new home.” 

Anna took Cain’s leash and led Rachel to the man behind the desk, who said his name was Gary. Gary asked her to sit down for a moment and then, about ten minutes later, her name was called and she was led into an office. 

She sat down in front of a desk piled high with papers. After some failed small talk, the man at the desk finally got down to business. 

There was a lot of paperwork, but Taylor had helped her prepare, even if the conversation had involved a lot of yelling on the phone between her and Lisa. Rachel wasn’t happy about all of the documents she barely understood, but she knew what she had to do. She wrote her name where she was supposed to and waited for the guy to dismiss her. Eventually they reached the end of the mountain of paper and he looked up. 

“Great! You can go see how Cain is doing while I process the paperwork. We’ll call you shortly Ms. Lindt.”

Rachel snorted and walked out of the stuffy office. 

Almost immediately, she was greeted by a dog. He was a pug, tiny and puffing like he’d never gotten a full breath of air in his life, and he was snuffling at her boots. 

For a moment, Rachel wasn’t sure what to do. The dog didn’t look like he’d ever been abused and his stubby tail wagged happily as he sniffed her. She was used to unfamiliar dogs growling, maybe even biting if she wasn’t being careful enough. Tail wagging was… well she hadn’t seen a new dog wag its tail in a very long time. 

She slowly crouched down and offered her loosely closed fist for the pug to inspect. He sniffed loudly and then licked her knuckles. 

Unsure how to proceed, Rachel tentatively reached out to scratch him behind the ear. He responded by wagging his butt more than his tail. 

“I see you found Sardine,” a voice said behind her. Rachel stiffened. “He loves strangers. Do you want to see how Cain is doing?"

Rachel stood up. She considered telling this girl off, showing that she didn’t need any help finding her dog, but she supposed that she didn’t have the authority to do that here. This wasn’t her territory. 

“Yes."

The girl smiled. 

“He stayed by the office for a while, but eventually he decided to go outside. I think he and Daisy are on the porch together.” 

Rachel nodded and let the girl lead her through the kitchen. Sardine followed at her heels, occasionally jumping in the faces of the other dogs that were otherwise just lying there peacefully. 

A couple of the bigger dogs raised their heads as she walked past, and one let out a quite _boof_ when she stopped next to him. Sardine didn’t go through the open door, instead staying inside to walk around that dog. 

The girl led Rachel right to Cain, who immediately got up and walked over to her when he saw her. She scratched his ears and side until he let out a happy bark. Then Daisy, a long haired golden lab, stood up and joined them, mostly just leaning against Rachel’s legs until she relented and pet her too. 

Before she knew it, Rachel was swarmed with dogs, all nudging each other and yapping as they tried to get close enough to be pet. Anna helped divide the work, giving attention to the dogs that Rachel couldn’t reach. 

When she finally left, Rachel felt pretty confident that she’d left Cain in a good place. 

\---

After that, Rachel continued to visit the Old Friends Senior Dog sanctuary. 

On her fourth or fifth visit, she learned the name of the girl that had greeted her at the door. Anna was apparently going to school to learn to be a vet. Not that Rachel cared, but it meant that she was very good and spotting when the dogs were having trouble- especially more trouble than their old limbs and failing senses usually gave them. 

Anna knew all of the dogs on a personal level, almost as well as Rachel had known Brutus and Judas and Angelica. Something twisted in her chest when she thought of them. They had deserved better, they shouldn’t have died for other people’s stupidity. 

She picked up a tennis ball and tossed it near some of the more active dogs. An old doberman, whose face was almost entirely white with age, got up and ran after it. 

A couple of smaller dogs, a dachshund and yorkie among them, barked when she ran past them. Anna laughed. “Liege and Johnny are some of our crankiest pups.” 

Rachel grunted and mostly ignored Anna’s commentary as the doberman, Sunny, returned with the ball. Rachel threw it again, and continued to do that until Sunny was panting and finally left the ball where Rachel had thrown it. To her surprise, Sunny returned, then sat next to her on the deck. After a moment, Rachel sat down next to her. 

“I have to go start preparing their dinners, but you should give Sunny some love, the other dogs aren’t so fond of her,” Anna said, standing up. Rachel knew how that went. She stayed until it got dark. 

\----

Eventually, Rachel began volunteering at the Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary. It actually started because Anna _wasn’t_ there one day. She had knocked on the door and the man that usually stayed behind the desk answered it. 

When he saw her, he asked if she would help him feed the dogs. Nothing difficult, the food had already been prepared, but Maysie the border collie needed encouragement while she ate, otherwise she would just leave the food alone and Liege the dachshund had to be tricked into taking him medicine. 

Rachel decided to feed Maysie while the man behind the counter, Gary, took care of Liege. When he asked her to help prepare some of the dogs beds, including pulling sheets out of the drier and fluffing pillows, Rachel was happy to help. She even helped with some of the dishes. 

After that, she became an unofficial volunteer. She visited when she could, to say hello to Cain, of course, but also to pet Sardine and Sunny, to sit on the deck with Liege and Johnny, to give Maysie her injections. 

She avoided visitors, but she welcomed the new dogs, and soon enough she knew these guys as well as she knew the dogs at home. Some she knew better. She was there for Liege’s birthday (Anna had sent her a way too sparkly invitation) and she watched as Sardine found a foster home, though she didn’t talk to the people adopting him. She didn’t trust them, but Anna and Gary did so… 

She just tried not to think too much about that. Instead she went outside to the deck, where Sunny was lying next to a new dog, a black retriever. She held out her hand to the retriever, who stood up when she approached. The dog sniffed her hand, then, apparently satisfied, circled around a couple of times, then lay back down next to Sunny. After a moment, Rachel sat down with them. Sunny’s stump of a tail wagged as Rachel absently scratched behind her ears. 

After a couple of tries, the retriever let Rachel pet her too. Rachel stayed there for most of the afternoon, enjoying the sun and the relative quiet. And then, when it was dinner time, she got up and started helping with the chores. It felt good to be able to help. She felt like she had found a place here.


End file.
